I
had hitherto seen her, entering into all my little projects with as much
eagerness as though she were herself a child. How soon I had learned to
love her! Why had I lived all those dreary years at Park Hill without
knowing her? But I could never again feel quite so lonely--never quite
such an outcast from that common household love which all the girls I
had known seemed to accept as a matter of course. Even if I should
unhappily be separated from Sister Agnes, I could not cease to love her;
and although I had seen her for the first time barely forty-eight hours
ago, my child's instinct told me that she possessed that steadfastness,
sweet and strong, which allows no name that has once been written on its
heart to be erased therefrom for ever.

My thoughts were running in some such groove, but they were all as
tangled and confused as the luxuriant undergrowth around me. It must
have been out of this confusion that the impulse arose which caused me
to address a question to Sister Agnes that startled her as much as if a
shell had exploded at her feet.

"Dear Sister Agnes," I said, "you seem to know my history, and all about
me. Did you know my papa and mamma?"

She dropped the leaf that held her fruit, and turned on me a haggard,
frightened face that made my own grow pale.

"What makes you think that I know your history?" she stammered out.

"You who are so intimate with Lady Chillington must know why I was
brought to Deepley Walls: you must know something about me. If you know
anything about my father and mother, oh! do please tell me; please do!"

"I am tired, Janet. Let us sit down," she said, wearily. So, hand in
hand, we went back to the rustic seat and sat down.

She sat for a minute or two without speaking, gazing straight before her
into some far-away forest vista, but seeing only with that inner eye
which searches through the dusty chambers of heart and brain whenever
some record of the past has to be brought forth to answer the questions
of to-day.

"I do know your history, dear child," she said at length, "and both your
parents were friends of mine."

"Were! Then neither of them is alive?"

"Alas! no. They have been dead many years. Your father was drowned in
one of the Italian lakes. Your mother died a year afterwards."

All the sweet vague hopes that I had cherished in secret, ever since I
could remember anything, of some day finding at least one of my parents
alive, died out utterly as Sister A